Jamey Johnson celebrates gold ‘Guitar Song’

Before Jamey Johnson wowed the Bridgestone Arena crowd Friday as one of Kid Rock’s opening acts, Universal Music Group Nashville threw an intimate party across the street at the Palm to celebrate the gold status of his latest album, The Guitar Song. (Gold certification comes with 500,000 copies sold.)

Johnson showed up fashionably late with 7-year-old daughter Kylee in tow, and Kylee loaded her buffet plate with jumbo shrimp while her dad worked the room, talking with friends and label associates.

The chatty room quieted down when UMG Nashville chairman and CEO Luke Lewis took the microphone.

“There were 125 new albums on the country charts last year,” he said. “Four of them went platinum, six went gold and nine of them had No. 1 songs. Then there’s Jamey who got no (expletive) love (from country radio).”

“It’s OK,” Johnson yelled out. “I said it in the car on the way over.”
Kylee followed up Lewis’ remarks by jumping up from her table and taking the mic herself. The audience laughed, and Johnson grinned, telling Kylee to say something.

“I have question,” she replied, pointing to Johnson’s gold plaque. “Where are we going to put that?”

Kylee held onto the mike, but her dad took a few minutes to thank the folks who helped him make the album.

“I look around and I have made every single one of you earn your money,” he said. “This is cool because at the end of the day when you end up with something like this, you get to keep it and treasure it forever.” (We bet the plaque winds up hanging in Kylee’s bedroom.)